Abattoir Blues | The Lyre of Orpheus (Reissue)

Nick Cave is the ideal Anti artist, a maverick who changed the sound of popular music as part of the seminal goth-punks The Birthday Party. His band of twenty years, The Bad Seeds, have provided Cave with sympathetic backing as he has developed into one of the foremost songwriters of his time, whose songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Johnny Cash, Metallica, and My Morning Jacket. Steeped in American roots music, Cave's solo work has veered between poignant gospel-inflected ballads and the steamy thud of backwater blues and country. Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus showcases both these sides of Cave's songwriting at their best, with the Bad Seeds rising to fine, even funky, form.
,br> With Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus we have something that few could have expected - two albums that can both be regarded as self-contained masterpieces; two storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful records that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer's block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe we're projecting here.